Hello everyone, thanks for taking your time to read this. I am just getting started with O365 so if this is the wrong place for my question you might be able to point me into the right direction.I am playing with an O365 Business Premium Version. This is supposed to be setted up for a small company with around 10 users. We want a shared storage for everyone where the admin can restrict access to folder by groups and roles. As far as I could see, the OneDrive Cloud is only personal storage for every user in the company. Do I have to use Sharepoint if I want a folder structur used by everyone together?I was hoping I could simply create all the folders with the admin user and then set up the priviliges like when I am using a Windows Server and Active Directory.Im sure by now I made a total fool out of myself but every bit of help to get started with O365 is appreciated. Regards,Flo

Hey Florian Maaß, Don't worry about coming off as a fool, we all started our journey in O365 at some point, and it is a new and confusing world when you come from the rigid structure of on-prem where your applications are much more subscribed. Suddenly you are in the cloud and there are so many shiny things, and options to play with. To answer your question, group/company storage is setup and intended to be used in SharePoint. You can either create a document library in there directly, or what I would do in your case is go with a Team. Teams by default create with a files section, that is actually just a document library under the covers. This would give all your users an application they can use to chat, communicate, and share files easily. OneDrive can be used to do this with 10 users, you would just have to create a folder in one persons onedrive and share permissions out. But onedrive is tied to the user. Say you do this in yours, then you win the lottery and leave, well then the company files by default go with your account when its removed. As such SharePoint (and by extension Microsoft teams) would be the recommended option here as it is shared group storage, it is tied to the tenant (not a user), and it really does have the best level of controls, permissions, and sharing options. Hope this helps!Adam

Hey Florian Maaß, Probably the easiest way to do this is to not put all the files together in one location like you would a centralized file server. Instead, take each group and separate out their folders into their own document libraries. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/what-is-a-document-library-3b5976dd-65cf-4c9e-bf5a-713c10ca2872 - Introduction to the concept of a document library https://support.office.com/en-us/article/create-a-document-library-in-sharepoint-306728fe-0325-4b28-b60d-f902e1d75939 - how to create a document library Let me try to conceptualize this a bit for you. Lets say you have a D:\ Drive from a old file server. In the D drive you have 4 folders, you have HR, Marketing, Managing Director, and IT. In your old file server system, you would just have D:\HR\, D:\Marketing, etc, and would do permissions for each folder. In SharePoint, just take the D drive out of the equation. Instead, create a document library for each one. So Document Library A would be called HR, Document Library B would be called Marketing, so on and so forth. The document Library becomes the new central tool that you are using to group your users, rather than a parent folder that existed in the main file servers drive, you move to a document library. Each document library allows you to create permissions as well as folder tree's, and by default have the ability to inherit or do custom permissions all the way down. So you would start by giving everyone who did have access to the HR folder on your file server, access to the HR document library. So inside the HR document library, you could have many more folders and files, and everyone in HR that has access to that document library by default then has access to all the files throughout the folder structure. (Again if you want to make it more complicated you can break this and do permissions a bit more granularity, but the default is that all permissions are 'inherited" down from the folder above it in document libraries). For most people this is how they have it setup. You then would just have your users bookmark the URL for the document libraries that they use. When they go to save files in their applications, assuming they are O365 versions of office, they will also have the option to save to these cloud locations. So if I am working on a Word document, I can choose to save the file to the HR document library directly from my word application. Finally if you have someone who REALLY wants to have the look and feel of the old traditional file server, you can map sharepoint document libraries. This is not really how they are intended to be used, so I would recommend having your users try to use the web interfaces, but so you have the knowledge - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/how-to-configure-and-to-troubleshoot-mapped-network-drives-that-connect-to-sharepoint-online-sites-in-office-365-ef399c67-4578-4c3a-adbe-0b489084eabe Hope this helps!Adam

Hey Adam Ochs, thank you so much for the quick and detailes reply.That already helped me a lot. I got an idea where to look and start now.Do you have any recommendations for help documentations or tutorials on how to set this up properly?I haven't managed to find something yet. Thanks again!Flo

Hey Florian Maaß, This guide is great is you are going to try teams, and like i said I am a huge fan of theres. Think of Skype on steorids (in a good way). It does chat, video, screenshare, plus some additional great collaboration options such as the file sharing you were looking for. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/microsoft-teams Just start on the getting started section of that doc, and it will guide you through what you need to know. If you just want to stay simple for now, and tackle teams later, this doc will walk you through setting up a document library in Office 365. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/create-a-document-library-in-sharepoint-306728fe-0325-4b28-b60d-f902e1d75939 Goodluck, if you start getting into it and have any questions, just come back here or shoot me a PM and I will be happy to help! Adam

Hey, this is great. Thanks again.I will work my way through those guides. Right now I'm feeling like it might be a good idea to stay simple for now to get it started and then switch over to teams once I fully understand whats happenning in O365. Also thank you for the offer of help in the future. I might come back to that! :-)Cheers,Flo

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12 Replies

Adam Ochs
Steel Contributor
Nov 12, 2018
Hey Florian Maaß,

Don't worry about coming off as a fool, we all started our journey in O365 at some point, and it is a new and confusing world when you come from the rigid structure of on-prem where your applications are much more subscribed.

Suddenly you are in the cloud and there are so many shiny things, and options to play with.

To answer your question, group/company storage is setup and intended to be used in SharePoint. You can either create a document library in there directly, or what I would do in your case is go with a Team. Teams by default create with a files section, that is actually just a document library under the covers. This would give all your users an application they can use to chat, communicate, and share files easily.

OneDrive can be used to do this with 10 users, you would just have to create a folder in one persons onedrive and share permissions out. But onedrive is tied to the user. Say you do this in yours, then you win the lottery and leave, well then the company files by default go with your account when its removed.

As such SharePoint (and by extension Microsoft teams) would be the recommended option here as it is shared group storage, it is tied to the tenant (not a user), and it really does have the best level of controls, permissions, and sharing options.

Hope this helps!
Adam
- Florian Maaß
  Copper Contributor
  Nov 12, 2018
  Hey Adam Ochs,
  
  thank you so much for the quick and detailes reply.
  That already helped me a lot.
  
  I got an idea where to look and start now.
  Do you have any recommendations for help documentations or tutorials on how to set this up properly?
  I haven't managed to find something yet.
  
  Thanks again!
  Flo
  - Adam Ochs
    Steel Contributor
    Nov 12, 2018
    Hey Florian Maaß,
    
    This guide is great is you are going to try teams, and like i said I am a huge fan of theres. Think of Skype on steorids (in a good way). It does chat, video, screenshare, plus some additional great collaboration options such as the file sharing you were looking for.
    
    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/microsoft-teams
    
    Just start on the getting started section of that doc, and it will guide you through what you need to know.
    
    If you just want to stay simple for now, and tackle teams later, this doc will walk you through setting up a document library in Office 365.
    
    https://support.office.com/en-us/article/create-a-document-library-in-sharepoint-306728fe-0325-4b28-b60d-f902e1d75939
    
    Goodluck, if you start getting into it and have any questions, just come back here or shoot me a PM and I will be happy to help!
    
    Adam

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